John Wesley: The Development of Wesley's Doctrine and Work

John M'Clintock (1814-70) and James Strong

Credits

The following life and works of Wesley comes from from the tenth volume of the authors' Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. George P. Landow scanned, formatted, and linked the text.]

Formulation of a Doctrinal Platform

The doctrinal platform of the Wesleyan societies was formulated, at least in its essential outlines, at this first conference.
Wesley himself had, after diligent study while at Oxford, conclusively accepted the Anninian theory of general redemption, and learned to regard the doctrines of selection and reprobation, as held by Calvin, with very
deep abhorrence. His adhesion to what he believed to be the teaching of Holy Writ had brought him into an unpleasant conflict with Cennick, his lay helper at Bristol, and with his friend and fellow-evangelist Whitefield. The latter, having while in New England become enamoured with its then prevailing Calvinism, took grave ofirnce at a sermon preached by Wesley in 1740
"on "free grace," and protested against it very severely
in a letter to Wesley, which Whitefield's friends published in England. Cennick espoused the opinions of the letter, and, though in Wesley's employ, sowed the
seeds of dissension in the Bristol society. The consequence was Cennick's separation from Wesley, Whiteifield's temporary estrangement from his old friend, and the division o fMethodism into two branches, the Calvinistic and the Wesleyan. Subsequently the two friends "agreed to differ," though they henceforth wrought in separate paths. But during this controversy the creed
of the coming Wesleyan Church was practically settled; and when Wesley assembled his first conference, and its members conversed two days on "what to teach,"
they found themselves in substantial agreement on the
atonement, election, justification by faith, the witness
of the Spirit, entire sanctification, and other leading
doctrines. Thus Wesley's theological views became
the accepted platform of the great ecclesiastical system
which he was unconsciously organizing.

During the five
vears preceding this first conference great things had
been accomplished. Starting from London and Bristol
as the centres of his movement, Wesley had traversed
the country from the Land's End to Newcastle, and had
formed societies in numerous towns and cithes. In London alone those societies numbered not, less than two
thousand souls. Their number elsewhere is not known, but it must have been several thousands. Forty-five
preachers, including two ordained clergymen, were la
boring under his direction. Unnumbered thousands were accustomed to listen to the quickening words
which fell with unwonted power from his lips, and from
those of his devoted and laborious lielpers. They had
much bitter opposition and harsh persecution to contend with, and very little public sympathy to encourage
them. The lower orders were steeped in brutality, the
upper classes were hardened by scepticism and devoted
to o pleasure. The clergy were frozen amid the formaliies of the Establishment. The Dissenting churches, with their ministers, were too lukewarm to breast the
swelling tide of immorality which overflowed the land.
They were, as Isaac Taylor remarks, "rapidly in course
to be found nowhere but in books." And the peculiar
characteristic of the English nation was, to use the
words of Wesley, "universal, constant ungodliness."
Against this triumphant wickedness Wesley, with his
brother Charles, a handful of spiritual clergymen, and
his little band of lay helpers, inspired by heroic faith,
had entered the lists, determined to overthrow it and to
establish the reign of scriptural holiness in its stead.
It looked like an unequal and hopeless strife. But he
threw himself with more than a hero's daring into the
midst of the fray and led the van of a host which, if it
did not wholly purify England, wrought a great reformation in public morals, poured fresh tides of spiritual
life into both the Established and Dissenting churches,
raised up that great body of spiritual men and women
who finally constituted the Wesleyan Church, and effected a reformation which broke the sceptre of ungodliness and made England a comparatively godly nation.